Stop all the stadium clocks and start up the most in-depth of investigations.
No game is worth a life.

No rivalry, however stoked to fever pitch by national events, should be allowed to descend into the darkness of stampedes, violence, stone-throwing and chasing opposing fans, leading to countless deaths from suffocation. So let the mourning begin and the inquiries follow suit discreetly.

Where were the police? Where were the security forces? The appalling loss of life in Port Said needs investigating by Fifa, not just by the local authorities. Somebody needs to cut through all the tense politics seizing Egypt, establishing exactly what happened and ensuring a repeat is prevented.

Fifa owes a duty to the game globally to send a message that such tragedies will be looked into, that supporters have a right to attend games with proper safety systems in place. Fifa must remind the world that the game is a sport, not an arena for political point-scoring if that was the genesis behind last night’s carnage.

The images emerging from Egypt were deeply distressing. The first-person accounts from some of the players involved in the Al-Masry v Al-Ahly game added to the sense of a stadium in the grip of lawlessness. "People here are dying and no one is doing a thing,’’ said Al-Ahly’s Mohammed Abu Trika, criticising the police for not becoming involved. “It's like a war. Is life this cheap?"

Those words should reverberate through the corridors of power. It’s like a war? Football should be a celebration of humanity’s positive qualities, not a bonfire of the sanity, an excuse for belligerence.

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Is life this cheap? It can never be. Fifa must conduct an inquiry that produces safeguards in Egyptian stadiums, and a reminder to others around the world that life and limb must always be protected.

Sepp Blatter, Fifa’s president, said how “shocked and saddened” he was by the deaths. “This is a black day for football,’’ he added. “Such a catastrophic situation is unimaginable and should not happen."

But it did. It could do again, prompted by other causes in another country, turning a sporting setting into a killing field. Blatter must back up such words with the right deeds, appointing a high-ranking Fifa official to lead an investigation into events in Port Said. Never again.